Liberal media organizations are largely remaining mum over the unified stance they’ve embraced in rejecting the unofficial “border czar” label of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris was widely dubbed the “border czar” after President Biden tasked her in March 2021 to address the root causes of mass migration from Central and South America. While the Biden administration has rejected the title, the term was widely used by her critics and even embraced by multiple news organizations, at least until she ascended to the top of the ticket as the Democratic presidential nominee after Biden announced his exit from the race.
Fox News Digital asked several news organizations, including CNN, MSNBC, CBS, The New York Times and Axios, about their vocal rejection of the “border czar” label in recent days, pressing why all of a sudden they were doing so and whether the Harris campaign pressured them into resisting the label. Most did not respond.
THE MEDIA’S SUDDEN REJECTION OF KAMALA HARRIS’ ‘BORDER CZAR’ LABEL
Major liberal media outlets suggested that Kamala Harris was never President Biden’s “border czar,” despite past reporting that used the same language. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski /AFP)
PolitiFact gave the claim by Republicans that Harris as border czar was “put in charge of stopping illegal immigration” a “Mostly False” rating.
Katie Sanders, the editor-in-chief of PolitiFact, told Fox News Digital “we were under no pressure to write this article from the Harris campaign, nor from the White House, nor from anyone else.”
“This is one of many talking points circulating since her recent candidacy, and we heard it during the RNC, too. That’s why we decided to start on a fact-check of it at the beginning of the week,” Sanders said.
USA Today similarly ruled it “false” to say she was “put in charge of the border” and that her role was “more limited” than what a border czar would do.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a USA Today spokesperson said “The USA TODAY Fact Check team works independently. Our team was not in communication with the Harris campaign and we stand by our reporting.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre cited “independent fact-checkers” touting the administration’s talking points on the matter under questioning about Harris this week.
Axios went viral Wednesday with its report about the “border confusion” that has haunted Harris, telling readers “the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.”
However, critics cited Axios’ own reporting from 2021 saying that Biden had appointed Harris “border czar.” Axios later added an editor’s note stating “This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.”
AXIOS HIT WITH COMMUNITY NOTE AFTER CLAIMING HARRIS WAS NEVER ‘BORDER CZAR’
CNN also went through a drastic shift. During the Biden-Harris administration, multiple correspondents and commentators referred to Harris as the “border czar,” including analyst Alyssa Farah Griffin.
CNN reporter Daniel Dale argued that Harris “was never put in charge of the border.” (Screenshot/CNN)
But this week, CNN anchors including Jake Tapper, John Berman and Kasie Hunt have rebuked the title.
“[Former President Trump] said she was Joe Biden‘s border czar. She wasn‘t,” CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale said Wednesday. “She was never put in charge of the border. She was given a much more limited assignment to lead a so-called root causes diplomatic effort trying to address the reasons in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras that people choose to migrate.”
“Many Republicans scoff at this kind of fact-check, they’re like ‘There were a bunch of articles back in 2021, they called her ‘border czar.’ Frankly, those articles were wrong,” Dale added, touting the outlet’s own reports at the time that didn’t embrace the term.
Several hosts on MSNBC similarly pushed back against the label. Symone Sanders, who previously served as Harris’ chief spokeswoman in the Biden administration before joining the network, lumped in the border czar claims against her former boss with “misinformation” about the VP.
“People are going to have to challenge the misinformation,” Sanders said on “Morning Joe” Wednesday. “You already hear folks talking about the ‘border czar.’ She wasn’t the ‘border czar.’ She did diplomacy in Central America, but the campaign is going to have to make that case.”
ABC’s Jonathan Karl sang from the same sheet of music, saying “She wasn’t the border czar. That’s what Republicans labeled her. She was given the job of dealing with all the migration that was coming up from Central America. But they will portray her as the one that was in charge of the border, which of course is issue No. 1 for Republicans.”
CBS News pushed back on the label with multiple segments dedicated to the subject on its streaming channel.
“Vice President Harris was not a border czar,” CBS anchor John Dickerson declared in one of the segments before a correspondent elaborated on what her role was.
The media’s “border czar” war erupted following the Democrats’ swift coalescing behind Vice President Kamala Harris as their party’s presumptive presidential nominee. (ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)
Several other outlets also bent over backwards to separate Harris from the label. TIME Magazine ran the headline “Kamala Harris Was Never Biden’s ‘Border Czar.’ Here’s What She Really Did,” calling the label “misleading” while admitting it had become a “political liability.”
NPR said conservatives “made up the inaccurate term ‘border czar,’” insisting the role of controlling the border belongs to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The Washington Post accused the Trump campaign of “falsely branding her the nation’s ‘border czar'” in a campaign ad.
The New York Times got ahead of other news organizations, printing the headline “Why Republicans Keep Calling Kamala Harris the ‘Border Czar” on July 17, four days before Biden announced his exit from the race.
The New York Times got ahead of other news organizations in downplaying Harris’ “border czar” label, running a story several days before President Biden announced his exit from the 2024 race. (Fox News )
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“Ms. Harris was not, in fact, appointed border czar, nor was she tasked with addressing the broader problems plaguing the border itself,” the Times wrote last week. “Rather she was deputized by President Biden with the diplomatic mission of solving the ‘root causes’ of migration from countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, tackling the issues that spur people to flee in the first place, like drug violence and lack of economic opportunity.”
Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.